This coming Sunday is Advent Sunday - it's the first of four Sundays before Christmas Day. Advent means coming or arrival and the excitement about Christmas - Jesus being born into this world - builds durng those four weeks.

Here's something I love, which helps me to focus on the meaning of Advent and Christmas. Maybe it will help you too...

One Solitary Life

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village, where he worked in a carpenter's shop until he was thirty. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never travelled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born.

He did none of the things usually associated with greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only thirty three. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies. And went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves and, while dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing: the only property he had on earth.

When he was dead He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone and today Jesus is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind's progress.

All the armies that have ever marched; all the navies that have ever sailed; all the parliaments that have ever sat; all the kings that ever reigned - put together - have not affected the life of mankind on earth as powerfully as that one solitary life...